Torment
by Asynca
Summary: Oneshot. Just what does House see in Wilson?


TORMENT!

Between sleeping through his alarm (drowsiness) insistent headache (rise in intracranial pressure) and the higher-than-usual desire to brutally murder House (irritability), Wilson had already diagnosed himself with a frontal lobe tumour before breakfast.

Of course, some of those symptoms were probably at least partially attributable to his apartment having been raped and pillaged at 2-something in the morning by a stoned insomniac, who had been waving his arms far too enthusiastically and using polysyllabic, complicated words that had no meaning in the absence of caffeine.

The blurry silhouette had then extracted various items from his fridge, raided his DVD collection and disappeared into the night. Though, not before most of his suburb was treated to a Honda Repsol's best impression of a Boeing 747.

At 5:12am his hand had woken him from a dream about chasing House around a rat-maze by pressing a strange, smooth object against his ear.

"It's Rubenstein-Taybi Syndrome!" The object had blasted; he had recognised the tune paying in the background as Hallelujah. "What are you doing up at 5am, anyway?" The voice had quizzed him as he mashed the keypad with his thumb, hoping to inadvertently find the 'end' button.

Wilson realized that he'd been staring into his closet for a full five minutes, and he was no closer to figuring out the chronology of events from the previous evening or finding his umbrella.

Given that he was absolutely certain (well, as certain as he could be on two and a half hours sleep) that he'd tossed his umbrella into the closet when he hung up his jacket, perhaps the tumour was actually in his temporal lobe. It would certainly explain why he only realized he'd washed his hair twice that morning when he tried to drag the comb through it, and it had squeaked.

Then again, perhaps the cane leaning against the umbrella stand in his alcove was a better explanation.

"Morning, Jimmy!" Whilst sprinting down the hallway would be an effective means of escape, his pounding skull had other ideas. Especially as the sonorous voice shouted next to his ear, "How's the head?!"

House's wildly grinning face obscured his view and interrupted his beeline for the kitchenette coffee machine. Wilson probably would have mentioned something about the correlation between late night drinking, multiple wake-up calls and a zero sense of humour – but he was distracted by his beige dinner suit. On House.

"I forgot to pick up my laundry," House offered as an explanation, through a generous bite of bagel.

Wilson's eyes followed the suit downward, and solved the mystery of his elusive umbrella. "Been watching Single White Female?" The too-short cuffs proudly displayed a pair of familiar, candy-striped socks.

"Tox screen's clear," An impassive, accented voice announced from the doorway.

"Didn't I ask you to put his blood on a slide?" House shouted exaggeratedly over Wilson's shoulder. Wilson wondered if his own blood was pouring out of his ears.

"…which turned out to be pointless," Another voice pointed out. "We knew he had malformed platelets already."

"Only because you weren't looking hard enough!" Umbrella-cane in hand, House swung past Wilson toward the gathering in the doorway. "You were too busy focusing on the umbrella!"

Turning to follow House's progress, Wilson decided the team looked about as exhausted and suspicious as he felt. Their eyes flickered between Wilson's umbrella and his triumphant grin, as House continued, "You missed a crucial detail."

Dr. Foreman glanced at the two other fellows; exhaling in defeat and crossing his arms, "What detail?" He indulged House, flatly.

One palm under his hamstring, House hoisted his right leg up onto one of the chairs, wincing. A vague feeling of foreboding brewed in Wilson's stomach as House took a handful of beige pant leg and drew it upward, displaying a pair of loud, white-and-red striped costume socks. Pulled up to his knees.

As the finishing touch, House threw his arms away from his body in a Tada! motion.

The scandalized expression on Cameron's face was almost enough to cause Wilson's sense of humour to recover from lack of sleep. Chase clearly thought so, too, because looking between her and House, he broke in a few rounds of entertained laughter. Dr. Foreman, on the other hand, looked on the verge of breaking out the Haldol and a straightjacket.

"Why are you doing this?" Wilson felt compelled to ask the universe, if not House, and at least for the sake of philosophy.

House relaxed his leg to the floor, and rolled his eyes, every movement hugely cartoonish, "Well, I thought that would be obvious. You keep telling me to dress better—"

"No, I don't!"

"—So, I figured, if I wore only your clothes today…" House continued, shooting a glance back toward his fellows, "I couldn't help but be suave!"

Three pairs of eyes looked from the candy-striped socks to Wilson… who threw up his hands in a "stop" motion, "Gift!" He tried to explain hurriedly, before turning back to House. If he'd taken the socks, no doubt he'd made off with the Cheno autographs, as well. Trying to mentally catalogue all of his potentially embarrassing memoriabilia, Wilson realized the proximity of the socks to original stage props. "Not wearing the ruby slippers?"

"Hello, fifteens," House gestured toward his Nikes. He looked from Wilson to his fellows, "Where's the festive spirit, people? Come on! The sun is shining—"

"It's snowing," Cameron sounded suddenly exhausted, "And it's January. And you're high."

"Figuratively," House said pointedly, "Besides, you're supposed to be the Puppy, not the Tinman," He paused, "And three guesses who's the one with no brain."

Chase stopped snickering.

"Okay," House gestured toward the corridor with the tip of the umbrella, "Go… do as I said," He paused as they filed out, and then, clearly deciding there wasn't enough cohesion in his argument, added "And no bringing me back old umbrellas, either. I want saucy underclothes only!"

As soon as the three of them had disappeared around the corner, House leaned conclusively onto Wilson's umbrella. "Feel like a game of snap?" He inquired, as if he hadn't just started a rumour about Wilson being a cross-dresser, or a paedophile, or whatever type of shady, perverted character owns a pair of candy-striped knee-highs.

"If we're going to talk about our feelings," Wilson began, mostly to strike terror into House's feeble heart (but also because it was a great way to link those sentences), "Why are you feeling so damn happy after, what, three hours sleep?" The relief on House's faces was positively quantifiable, "Test-driving an exciting new party drug?"

"Wilson, I've figured out what your problem is."

"My best friend is a drug-addicted psychopath?"

"No, no." House smiled headily at the ceiling, "I think you genuinely underestimate how much raw, simple pleasure it gives me to torment you." 


End file.
